Update: how many clicks get the results on Google’s first results page?

It’s important to be listed on Google’s first result page. If people cannot find your website in the search results, they won’t visit your website. How important exactly is it to be listed on Google’s first results page?

2017 click through rates by search engine position

A new study of Ignite Visibility shows the click through rates in 2017 by search engine position. The first result gets 44.64% of the clicks (details below). Interestingly, position 10 gets more clicks than position 6. There have been studies before:

In April 2011, Optify published a new study that shows the distribution of clicks on the first search result page. According to their data, the number one result receives 36.4% of the clicks and the last result on the first result page gets 2.2% of all clicks.

According to their data, 60% of the clicks go to the top three. The first result page gets 89% of all clicks. Ranking first on the second page has some benefits because there’s a slight bump for position eleven (2.6%, the first result for page two) over the last position on page one (2.2%, position ten). The next highest click through rate (CTR) on result page 2 is 1.5%. All other positions have lower CTRs.

In June 2010, BrandSoftech published statistics based on the analysis of 63 websites that received 5,357,519 clicks from 29,327 different key phrases typed into Google. According to their study, the top result receives 38.19% of all clicks while the last listing on the first result page gets 2.59% of all clicks.

Some years ago, AOL accidentally published the search data of 650,000 AOL users. That data also revealed how often the different search results were clicked. According to the AOL data, the top result gets 42.13% of all clicks and the last result gets 2.99% of the clicks.

The Cornell University conducted (PDF) a user-behavior study focused around search behavior specifically on Google. They used an eye-tracking study of a sample of undergraduate students to determine clicks and attention distribution. According to their data, 56.36% of all clicks go to the top ranked website. The last result on the first result page gets 2.55% of all clicks.

How does the new data compare to previous studies?

Here’s an overview of the click-through rates as reported by the different studies:

The new study also found out that position 16 still gets 7.80% of the clicks.

What’s the financial value of these rankings?

Having top 10 rankings is great but are the results really worth the time and effort? Here’s an example:

Say you run an ad on Google AdWords for a particular keyword that gets 10,000 impressions during a week. 200 visitors click the ad to visit your website.

6 of these visitors purchase something on your website and the total profit is $500.

The keyword delivers 200 visitors and 6 buyers to your website. The total profit is $500. That means that the average single visitor who finds your website through that keyword is worth $2.50 to your business (200 visitors created a profit of $500: $500/200 visitors = $2.50/visitor).

In this example, 10,000 people search for the keyword every week. If your website was listed as the first result for the keyword, you would get 4327 visitors per week (43,27% of all clicks go to the top ranked page, as explained above, this example assumes that all searchers click a listing in the results).

As the average visitors adds $2.50 to your profits (see above) you would earn $10,817.50 per week with just one top ranking.